Elective Dictatorship or Leadership?

Ron Paul, I like you - I really do. I like it when you denounce our military adventurism and imperial urges. I share your distaste for prosecuting harmless, consensual acts and I don't think either of us like having a government dictate morality according to some chosen religious standards.

I couldn't agree more that we need to keep the governmental nose out of our personal choices that don't infringe on other people's rights. I think we have an inherent right to be left alone too, but when you assert that that same government can force a woman to continue a pregnancy I find it inconsistent. When you proclaim that President Obama is overstepping his presidential powers by taking action to end a dangerous drug shortage, I'm confused. I'm disappointed. Market forces alone aren't going to induce drug companies to make unprofitable products that some people need to stay alive and if they eventually do, it won't be soon enough for someone's mother or sister or child. There are times when the the noli me tangere market approach does not serve the public interest and times when human life is more important than the sanctity of inflexible doctrine.

Yes, I agree that our government was designed to move slowly, for inaction to be the default action as you said yesterday. I even agree that there is an invisible hand in the market, but I cannot understand how you can ignore the sometimes dire consequences of such slow moving or inert systems in a world that moves at a rate inconceivable in 1789.

Sure, eventually drug shortages will tend to rectify because of market forces. 'Tend to' and 'eventually' are expensive words however and the price is often paid in death and suffering. A car tends to steer itself in a straight line, but you know, sometimes someone has to grab the wheel if staying alive is a consideration.

I have to ask you how much needless death and suffering are you willing to force us all to endure to gild the vision of a withered and minimal state where things move only by themselves and the making of money is the only test of righteousness?

Dictatorship? Seriously? Isn't that a bit like calling the guy who pulls your kid out of a well a kidnapper because he didn't apply to Congress in advance through proper channels?

I believe in Democracy as much as you do and perhaps more. I mistrust radical change and I lean toward Libertarianism in many things, but unlike you, I do not belief in faith over fact. If there is a plague, if a dam breaks -- if that asteroid that passed close to us this morning had landed in Texas, I want someone to grab the steering wheel without having his hands tied by doctrines soaked in the tea of Utopian visions.

I have to ask "why now?" Were you as firm in protest of our previous president's extra-legal activities? The signing statements, the treaty breaking, the torture, the illegal search and seizure and surveillance? The wars that have killed hundreds of thousands, destroyed millions of lives and wasted trillions of dollars? Of course you didn't approve and neither did I, but there is a difference between an asteroid and a sand grain. Are we really confusing necessary course corrections with wanton disrespect for law, due process and freedom?

Why now? Or are you just jumping on the Obama Bashing Band Wagon because you're more of a loyal Republican and less interested in doing what needs to be done before too many people die than you'd like to admit?

Ron Paul: Liberal

Some people like to dismiss Ron Paul as a simple minded extremist loony. I don't think that's fair and not just because I'm often dismissed with the same simple mindedness by the same simple minds. Yes, I think Dr. Paul does take many things to an extreme point, but you know -- sometimes he's right and sometimes so far to the right that he comes back around the spherical universe and appears on the left.

When he was booed at last night's Tea Party "debate," he was booed as a Liberal, not as the dogmatic, theory obsessed, quasi-anarchist and not-too-bright demagogue he's been portrayed as. He was booed for not bleating and re-bleating the recorded message about why "they" hate us, which, if truth ever be told, isn't for our freedom: a thing which in fact has a larger following amongst Muslims that can be allowed by the Jingoistic braying of the party for which the jackass is not the symbol -- but for the reality.

The reality is and the reality has been that not only al Qaeda but others have hated the US government for interfering in Middle East, for rightly or wrongly supporting Israel, for building military bases in places they see as sacred and for supporting oppressive governments because they were "anti-Communist" and willing to exploit their resources for our benefit.

Who else in the Republican Party is willing to step outside the passion play and challenge the formula: they hate us because we're all good and always good and so we have to hate them -- all of them, all of the time?

“This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and their attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true,”

he said last night. But what set the snarling beasts off their feed was

“Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment,”

which quite plainly is true.

The Tea Party picture of human and natural events needs to be presented in such high contrast that any smudge of darkness on our pure white character must be erased; there are no grays or colors and one is either the favorite angel of God or Satan's most foul smelling demon. To admit that any of our sacred military endeavors was not waged in defense of our alleged "freedom" puts one on the odiferous side and so yes, the Battleship Maine was blown up by the evil, freedom hating Spanish between bouts of raping American women and God really did want us to have the continent and our conquest thereof was just like the rape of Jericho only slower. It's anathema to suggest that we were not protecting our freedom by killing millions of Vietnamese or destroying Iraq and those who think and those who know must then be devils for suggesting that anything we ever have done might ever have made anything worse for us or anyone else of God's elect.

We have to believe, as we've been told, that "liberals" would have preferred to "psychoanalyze" al Qaeda than to retaliate, that Democrats unanimously voted against the odious Patriot Act when in fact their support was (sadly) unanimous. Facts don't matter and for the Tea Party only feelings matter and the only feelings they have are greed, anger and hate. If you're not unquestionably in support of everything we do; if you don't hate enough and hate whom we tell you to; if you don't think everything we do in anger isn't ipso facto God's will, you're our natural enemy even if you're Ron Paul and even if most people think you're so far right, you're wrong.

This time Ron Paul is right and it's time to question the people who say government is always wrong when they simultaneously say it's always right.

Montezuma’s Revenge (Hint: Human Sacrifice is Good for You)

By Octopus

I have often wondered where John F. Kennedy cribbed the phrase, “ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”

Researching the Internet yesterday for a clue, I finally located a source: Huitzilopochtli (plus a curious codicil from House Republicans, Eric Cantor and Ron Paul).

If you want to serve your country and heed the call of Cantor and Paul - which means pull the plug on FEMA, emancipate seniors from Social Security slavery, cast out MediScare, and gut food safety regulations - please note: Human sacrifice is pleasing to Huitzilopochtli.

No money for disaster relief?  No problem!  Let hurricanes drown all deadbeats on the Federal dole.  Distribute emergency food to the hungry?  Let them eat brioche!  Only 28,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths from tainted food each year?  Save money with salmonella!

With fewer folks making demands on the gubbermint, more supplies will surely trickle down to the rest of us. After all, human sacrifice is pleasing to Huitzilopochtli.

How many sacrificial human beings will it take to balance the budget?  To reach a savings of $2.7 trillion, a mere 100 sacrificial billionaires will suffice - compared to 163,279,483 middle-class Amerikaners.  But everyone knows billionaires have no hearts worthy of sacrifice, which is not pleasing to Huitzilopochtli.

Huitzilopochtli will be counting on us to do our civic duty.  So ask not what House Republicans can do for you - ask what you can do for House Republicans.

Right but wrong

You could fault Ron Paul for stating the obvious, but hey, somebody has to do it. Should the country try to save it's triple A rating with Moody's? Why bother when those helium-filled bond ratings proved to be based on politics and greed and by giving investors false confidence, helped precipitate the market collapse of 2008?

“I always wonder about this ratings, the bond ratings before the crash three years ago wasn’t helpful, so sometimes I wonder if it’s political theater to build up the fear.”

said Dr. Paul on Bloomberg TV yesterday. Of course it is, but is he doing the same thing?

But I'm not sure that I agree with the rest of his assessment: that the country is insolvent and bankrupt and got that way by excessive spending on the health and welfare of Americans. It's a bit like telling your spouse that the family could go to Disneyland more often if they weren't saddled with life insurance and a retirement savings plan, but I don't think one can rightly compare the financial problems of an individual or a family with the problems of a country in such a simplistic fashion.

One becomes insolvent and enters bankruptcy because one's income is insufficient to be able to manage one's debt. An individual does not always have control over how much money he makes; can't always find a job, can't always be healthy enough to work, can't always pay medical bills.

That's not so with a government. Our revenue shortfall is in some large part voluntary; an effort to "starve the beast" by thwarting its ability to run programs that the electorate voted for. That attempt is also a bit of political theater with a lot of smokey pyrotechnics and a bit of dramatic hand waving involved so as to obscure the fact that very low taxes on large incomes do not raise revenue, by magic transfer from the people who put much of their incomes into hedge funds and equities to the people who spend most of their incomes on food and shelter.

So yes, Social Security, a government program that did much to create the Middle class and take tens of millions of older people out of abject poverty, is going to run out of funds eventually because they're going to make it run out of funds so that they can do away with it. So yes, it's also political theater designed to create fear and panic, but perhaps the word 'theater' isn't quite strong enough. I'd call it a scam.

Why we need Ron Paul

by Capt. Fogg

I rather hope Ron Paul becomes the Republican presidential candidate in the next election. It's true that I agree with some of what he says, some of it quite strongly and it's true that I disagree as well and just as passionately, but if he is Barack Obama's challenger, the nature and tone of the debates and the wider campaign will have to address some fundamental assumptions that always are ignored. One of the many fundamentals that separate the left from the new right is the ranking of rights in our society. Paul asserts what most of his party would rather hide beneath heaps of polemical hyperbole: Property rights are the basis of freedom and being thus fundamental, must not be abridged for the common good.

I'm one of those people, you see, who thinks all ethics, or at least all ethical judgements are situational and that what we like to call fundamentals is an abstract construct, a bit like Euclidean geometry, which is immune from other, perhaps decisive factors. Parallel lines do indeed intersect in a universe with curvature and morally clear decisions become less clear when they have to cope with the purpose of morality and ethics.

Speaking to Chris Matthews last week, Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) declared that he would not have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- not because he's a racist, and to be sure he says he would have desegregated government institutions like schools, but because the rights of property owners are fundamental to our basic freedoms; freedoms that our constitution implies, are rights inherently and independently fundamental as they stand. Is he insisting that those with no property have fewer or no rights? That's up to him to clarify and I expect he would like the oportunity.

“I believe that property rights should be protected,”

says the man from Texas. Who would disagree when that's presented in the abstract? But life isn't an abstract thing and may I defend building a nuclear waste dump next to Manhattan because of that declared axiom? Are property rights part of a constellation of rights all designed by humans to make human life free of certain abuses? Are rights, like Newton's laws, fundamental or descriptive? If they are things invented by the people and for the people, to what purpose were they invented; to protect the one against the many or the many against the one or both? Do they apply equally at all points on the long curve or are only around the middle where we experience things?

I'm sure Paul would have to admit with liberals, that there are limits to "fundamental" rights, but just what those are and for what reason those limits are put there needs to be dragged out of the cave and into the light. Do rights exist for the benefit of people and if so does the right of one man always trump the right of every man? Are we here for the law or is the law here for us? Do the rights of all really flow from the rights of an individual or are individual rights sometimes an impediment? If there is an impediment to that road to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, must 300 million of us endure it so that the abstract right of one may be protected? Yes, that's extreme, but as with Newton's laws, it's the extremes that absolutes are shown not to be so. In short, can Libertarian theory produce a country that any of us will want to live in - in whole or in part?

(Of course if I were to debate him, I would, in my quasi-deconstructionist way ask him what he means by property and whether that question isn't more fundamental because without asking that, defending property rights can defend slavery or rape and some slightly worse things.)

We need to talk about it. We've been stuck at this point for too long. These concerns aren't new and they aren't going away and we all need to rethink our opinions at a fundamental level as a regular practice. I think Paul and Obama are both well qualified to do it and will do it -- and if we have to endure another hysterical fugue about flag pins and death panels and birth certificates and Communism aimed at the stupidest elements of the population; lies and slander and tactical statements of opinion that a moment may reverse - - well let's just say that the civil war doesn't need to be fought this way again.

St. Paul, Defender of the Faith.

By Captain Fogg

(with an afterthought from Octopus)

One of the things I have liked about Congressman Ron Paul is that he's often been on the side of deregulating private life and consensual behavior, but either he doesn't mean what he says or he is willing to say what he doesn't mean in order to curry favor with the Great Regulators of the Religious right.

Speaking in Iowa recently, Mr. Paul said:

"The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 to stop Big Government in Washington from re-defining marriage and forcing its definition on the States. Like the majority of Iowans, I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman and must be protected."

That resonates in my ears as a statement of his religious persuasion and of course he was speaking to a group of religions conservatives representing denominations opposed to letting people decide for themselves about such matters. Other religions might have other ideas and indeed some do. In other words these are people quite open about forcing their definition on Americans.

I find it curious that proponents of defining marriage according to religious definitions always use the word "is" where one expects "should be," "ought to be" or "must be" and there must be a reason for it. Marriage, after all is a human institution and marriage customs vary amongst groups of humans. Perhaps "is" is a way to pretend that it's written into the fabric of the cosmos like general relativity or the uncertainty principle. It isn't.

Of course Paul couched his opposition to doing away with the Defense of Marriage act in terms of states rights and whether or not he was following in the tradition of all the other "states rights" defenses of so many other things we now see as unjust, it's a defense of something with as limited a future as our embarrassing misogyny laws of recent memory. A minority of the country oppose preventing people from marrying whom they will and I can't help but find my feeling that the history of humankind's progress toward democracy is once again being thwarted by the notion of a divine will that opposes our allegedly innate liberty.

When someone who has been so stalwart in defending the Constitution and restraining government power, promotes such peremptory views on the most personal of choices, it seems a jarring discontinuity that makes on question the man and everything else he's described as being unconstitutional. It's hard to understand why he's willing to use government power to defend a certain Faith when that is something the government is expressly forbidden to do.

Yes, I know. I've been talking a lot about religion of late, but to me, there is no other force in American affairs more intractable than the movement to force compliance to religious standards on people who have or wish to have no affiliation with those standards and prefer the right to make personal choices according to their own consciences. That ability, that kind of freedom is the beating heart of liberal democracy. If we lose that, we lose it all.

It's sad to see Congressman Paul speaking this way. I once had high hopes for him, if not as Presidential material, certainly as a voice of reason and restraint at a time when the Republican party seems increasingly controlled by anti-democratic, anti-libertarian influences. Now he seems far less of a libertarian, far more of an authoritarian and indistinguishable from any other politician groveling before the powerful.

An afterthought from Octopus, who picks up where Captain Fogg leaves off: “indistinguishable from any other politician groveling before the powerful”

When we construct a hypothesis to explain any observed phenomena, the idea is to find the simplest possible construct that best fits the data. If you accept the premise that “pandering and political opportunism” is the motive that drives the Elder Paul, there is a good chance this hypothesis will withstand scrutiny. If you attribute religious belief in the broadest possible context as his motive, there are too many hypothesis-challenging exceptions to pass muster.

Not all religious denominations, for example, share the views of the Elder Paul. Look no further than the Reverend Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of The Interfaith Alliance, who has long criticized the abuse and misuse of religion in our public life.

Politicians are known to contradict themselves when stoking the fears of key constituencies and stakeholders, and Ron Paul is no exception. Inasmuch as the base of his party is right leaning and reactionary, why should his tilt towards authoritarian social control surprise us? The bogeyman behind the words is the bogeyman of wedge politics as candidates jockey for position and influence. I hope this clarifies Captain Fogg’s point.

Permit me this brief digression. Last night, I sent these links to Captain Fogg as ideas for a future discussion: The Ashtray: The Ultimatum (Part One) and The Ashtray: Shifting Paradigms (Part Two). Readers may want to read these links first to brush up on the issues before continuing. Here is the first analogy.

You have two fish in a fishbowl. One of them is golden in color; the other one is not. The fish that is golden in color, you name “Goldie.” The other fish you name “Greenie.” Perhaps you use the description “the gold fish” and point to the one that is golden in color. You are referring to the gold fish, Goldie. Over the course of time, however, Goldie starts to change color. Six months later, Goldie is no longer golden. Goldie is now green. Greenie, the other fish — the fish in the bowl that was green in color — has turned golden (…) The description theory would have it that Goldie means the fish that is golden in color, but if that’s true then when we refer to Goldie, we are referring to the other fish. But clearly, Goldie hasn’t become a different fish; Goldie has merely changed … appearance.

The flaw in the "Goldie" analogy is the misuse of semantics, of identifier and modifier merged into one and used interchangeably in the sense that: (1) a proper name identifies “Goldie” as the subject of this thought experiment, and (2) a modifier describe the properties of said subject such as color. In common parlance, a proper name is not subject to changes in appearance; whereas our choice of modifiers tends to be mutable and subject to revision as we observe change. Nice idea. I get the historical persistence point: Fishy example. In fewer words, if a very tall couple - well over six and half feet tall - plan to have children, they should never name their firstborn “Tiny Earl.” We need look no further than historical and comparative linguistics and the Brothers Grimm in search for better examples.

Similarly, Kuhn’s “paradigm shift” may have a certain revolutionary allure and Che Guevara appeal, but it fails to account for context and continuity, and the best example I can give is the difference between Newton versus Einstein. Although Kuhn may cite Einstein as an example of paradigm shift, the proper context is to view Newton as a subset of Einstein, not merely within the timeline of history but in how we observe the same phenomena at different velocities. Thus, there is nothing incommensurable in the shift from Newton to Einstein.

It seems the writer of the NYT article (Morris) understood these issues intuitively but could not articulate them with sufficient explanatory adequacy. Rightfully, Kuhn threw an ashtray at Morris who did not completely think through his homework.

All this brings me to a challenging subject. When we apply pure reason to various disciplines, we find that reason is time delimited, i.e. a snapshot of what we perceive at fixed points in time. Inasmuch as reason has been exalted as a reliable and trustworthy source of truth, such is not necessarily the case. The words that inform thought are plastic and malleable; the tools of reason are themselves flawed and forever changing; and the products of reason (i.e. the conclusions derived thereof) are subject to revision upon revision. If there is an evil genius at work, at least these preoccupations keep the Wunderkinder employed.

Perhaps another way of looking at things is not to pit religion against science, or reason against its presumed opposite, whatever the opposite of reason is, but to acknowledge all aspects of mind in more holistic terms – that consciousness is an adaptation leading to the more successful regulation of life. The conscious mind infuses human beings with an instinct to probe the unknown, and these faculties of mind take many forms: Sensory experience, emotions, inspiration, intuition, epistemology, phenomenology, logic and scientific observation … all contributing to a human penchant for speculative imagination. Why prejudice one aspect of mind against another when we should start this inquiry within the context of our long and tortuous journey that began ages ago in the Great Rift Valley.

Start your engines. Are we bursting with ideas?

Ron Paul and my rights

Non pudet, quia pudendum est;
prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est;
certum est, quia impossibile.*

I really want to like Ron Paul. There have been times when I felt we needed Ron Paul, even if only to keep the others honest. I concur wholeheartedly with many of his ideas about leaving people alone in their homes and private lives; about transparency in financial matters. I share the loathing of surveillance, of being forced to carry papers. I agree about the wars that are useful only to increase government power over domestic affairs. I agree about the importance of the Bill of Rights that neither Party seems to care much about -- and so on, but I am constantly reminded that I really don't know how he can say what he says, nor can I understand his motivations without postulating entities sufficient to send Occam running down the street screaming.

Two years ago he told us that

"Congress refuses to allow reasonable, environmentally sensitive, offshore drilling."

They did, of course allow drilling, but they allowed unreasonable, unsafe and reckless drilling, free of unbiased oversight, which according to Libertarian doctrine should have magically resulted in safe and reasonable results: they allowed the drillers to tell us what was safe enough and what was too expensive to do. They allowed the rig operators to determine what the lives of the workers were worth relative to profits and they allowed them not to give a damn that my grandchildren may never see a clean beach in Florida or eat Gulf shrimp.

It wasn't reasonable, environmentally sensitive drilling that got us into the current mess, now was it? It could have been all that if the laws had been enforced. The blowout might have been prevented if the people in charge of oversight hadn't been on the oil train and had done their jobs; if the regulations themselves hadn't been written by oil men and largely in secret -- if government hadn't been made to look the other way because of a philosophy teaching that government should look the other way. Eleven good men, many of whom saw this coming, would still be alive had we had some very basic oversight -- if we didn't have people insisting that the people who profit write the rules and the people with everything to lose keep silent or be called Communists.

Yet Dr. Paul says it was because of too much government that BP cheated and lied and people died -- that vast tracts of land and sea were destroyed, important industries were ruined, property made worthless -- and old fashioned as it may sound, I think contradictions in logic and fact weaken an argument. Is it a contradiction that oversight in an industry that has the capability of doing unprecedented damage is "too much government" while giving tax breaks and incentives to companies making tens of billions in profits is not?

Yes, it is a contradiction! Are we really so afraid of Communism that we're willing to accept what is by definition, giving state supported irresponsibility to state supported industries while calling it "limited government?" Or is it that the rather insignificant benefit of allowing a foreign corporation to pump American oil and sell it abroad in amounts that really don't matter either in terms of conservation or the price of crude, is a consummation so devoutly to be demanded that risking the end of the world is not worth talking about?

"We still need oil, and a lot of good jobs depend on oil production,"

he advises us. But do we need that oil, from there and do we need it so much we'll gamble our country's future on it, people's lives and livelihoods on grabbing a tiny bit more of it. We should be held hostage so that foreign corporations who pay hardly any taxes yet have a bigger vote than you do can add to their already obscene profits: so that they can play while we pay -- and pay forever.

It's a bad argument, a very, very bad argument, even coming from someone not smart enough to see that -- and Paul certainly is smart enough, so why is adding an insignificant amount to the current supply of oil so desperately important? Why are oil jobs more important than the countless other jobs destroyed by oil spills? Are today's fishing jobs, logging jobs, more important than making sure that there are fish and trees next week? Libertarianism would seem to say so. Libertarianism would seem to promise that passenger pigeons will return now that they were hunted to extinction, that we'd still have the American Bison and the Bald Eagle if we'd been allowed to shoot as many as we liked, but you know -- it's not true.

Look, I don't think I'm channeling Marx when I say that we don't have crime simply because we have too many police, that Enron destroyed lives and fortunes because the Government looked at their books; that people wouldn't rob banks if banks had no guards and robbery weren't illegal. I don't think it's communism to have a government say: no dammit, you can't build a fireworks factory next to that school and if you build it anywhere, you'll install sprinklers and put up no smoking signs, but that's just what people calling themselves libertarians are saying.

I don't understand and I'm quite sure I don't understand because it's not to be understood, it's to be believed. The pieces of the puzzle don't need to fit, the ideas don't need to work. In fact they have a history which proves it so. It's the logic of emotion; the argument from anger and the special pleadings of selfish solipsism: I don't care what happens to my country if oil is a penny a barrel cheaper for two weeks. I don't care if it's a Ponzi scheme because I'm making money. I don't care if I poison the river, my property rights are my property rights. I don't care if your grandmother can't ride my bus -- it's my bus and my right. I don't know if I'm more disturbed by the fact that I don't understand or by the fear that I do understand.

*There is no shame because it is shameful;
it is wholly credible, because it is unsound;
it is certain, because impossible.

(with apologies to Turtullian)

Ron Paul -- in the tradition.

Why does Ron Paul have to sound so damned reasonable? Why does he sound so much like I did in the late 60's? The party he somehow belongs to has been telling us we can't afford anything but wars for as long as I can remember and most of them, including the metaphorical war on drugs have produced no discernible benefit to our security or prosperity. Since much of the equipment we bought at irrational prices isn't suitable for any threat facing us, why the hell don't we stop doing that and spend the money on health care?

“Even though I have my ideal system I would like to see, with the government out completely — because that would be a much better system — that’s not going to happen. I’m realistic.”

Pragmatic, realistic, flexible and non-dogmatic? Stop it Ron -- you're killing me!

"I would cut from these trillions and trillions of dollars that we have spent over the years and bring our troops home so that we can finance it [health care].” Said Paul on CNN

Is that Dylan I hear in the background? No, not really, but it's about time that someone from the GOP, even if he's not really one of them, mentioned those trillions and trillions when complaining about the Democrats' big spending, and it's stunning to hear approval for Obama's curtailment of the F-22 fighter program at least as a first step. Of course he believes we can eventually wean ourselves away from such government health care programs and says "freedom" will produce better coverage than a bureaucracy.

Having worked for many years for insurance companies I see their bureaucracies as more expensive, less honest, more reckless and sometimes quite malignant, so I'm not so sure I agree. Still Dr. Paul is certainly not a war lover, has the courage to say it out loud and that's novel. All in all, when he described RonPaulSingles.com (”We put the ‘love’ in revolution”) the dating website for Paulistas on American Morning yesterday:

“It sort of fits a famous slogan that I sort of liked, which says ‘Make love not war,’"

I was inspired to dig out the John Brown gladiator sandals I used to wear back in the day. The times they are a'changin' you know.

Show me the money

Sometimes I think Ron Paul's ideas may be too simplistic. This isn't one of them. In a Forbes editorial last week, Congressman Paul called for an audit of the Federal Reserve Bank. Paul of course, doesn't buy the idea that the Fed is necessary to keep inflation low and to promote growth. Truth be told, I've been of the opinion that it has played a part in all but eliminating the 10 - 15 year cycle of boom, panic and collapse that has plagued our economy since the Washington administration. Maybe it has but maybe, as the Congressman claims, it's been the cause of inflation and a drag on growth. Maybe there's a better way and I'm the first to admit I don't know.

The idea of an independent Fed is a fallacy, says the man from Texas. The allegedly independent Fed has

" far too much authority to make agreements with foreign governments and central banks, or create temporary liquidity facilities"

and of course the Chairman and governors are appointed by the President and will reflect his politics, but the question of whether it is a good solution, a bad solution and more importantly whether we should have a Federal Reserve Bank at all isn't easy to answer and it isn't easy to discuss because of the political passions and partisanship involved. Everyone thinks he's an economist these days. Of course, supporter or detractor, we really don't know exactly what the Fed is doing anyway, not even today with the huge amounts of money being moved around in the dark.

'Let's have an audit' is Ron Paul's simple suggestion and one would think that at a time when the government has the power to audit anyone; to investigate, spy on, wire tap, seize assets and records, imprison without charges and even pour water up your nose, the answer would be "why the hell not?"

"What possible arguments exist against this bill? Who opposes an audit of the Fed's activities and why?"

asks Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com. "It would interfere with the Fed's independence" says Forbes in rebuttal and stresses that monetary policy is too complex for simple minded congressmen. Maybe it is, but maybe it's too complex for the Fed too and more than maybe; the lingering appearance of impropriety, if not incompetence, can finally be confirmed or dispelled by a little bit of transparency.

I wouldn't dare pass myself off as an economist and I'm not going to see this along party lines because I don't trust either side, particularly in this atmosphere of secrecy, but if an "independent" Fed means a Fed that operates in the dark, according to its own rules and politics, I'm with Congressman Paul. I want to see the books and you're going to have a lot of 'splainin to do to talk me out of it.

Perhaps I can use the words of surveillance supporters against the government for once: if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear.